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The Top Benevolent and Malevolent Dictators From History

Khalid Elhassan November 30, 2020 32 min

Augustus - Ancient Rome — 'The Emperor Augustus Rebukes Cornelius Cinna for His Treachery', by Etienne Jean Delecluze, 1814 - Augustus pardoned Cinna and gave him a government job. Van Go Yourself

23. Peisistratos Demonstrated the Upside of a Good Tyrant, but His Successors Demonstrated Tyranny’s Downside

Ancient Greek vase depicting the assassination of Peisistratos son, and Hippias’ brother, Hipparchus. Martin von Wagner Museum, Wurzburg, Germany

A key problem with a dictator or tyrant is that capable and benevolent dictators and tyrants are hard to find. For every capable and benevolent dictator or tyrant who advances the public good, there are many more incompetent ones who leave nothing but misery in their wake. Ancient Athens discovered that the hard way, when its wildly popular tyrant Peisistratos was succeeded by his sons.

After Peisistratos died in 527 BC, his sons Hippias and Hipparchus succeeded him as co-tyrants. At first, the siblings governed Athens competently and with a light hand. Then Hipparchus was assassinated in 514 BC in a private feud stemming from a romance that went bad. After his brother’s assassination, Hippias grew paranoid, and his rule became oppressive as he lashed out indiscriminately at enemies real and imagined. As Hippias grew ever more violent, and the number of victims and exiles forced to flee Athens grew, the popularity that tyranny had enjoyed since the days of Peisistratos faded.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.